Quarantine
by iSnuffles
Summary: The American Dream thrived; the children died. Prohibition America-centric.


Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia.

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><p><strong>Nome, Alaska. 1925.<strong>

The roaring twenties are a lie.

Alfred didn't know this, not at first, but he's learning quick enough. He had never been much of a party boy; always reverting back into his shy, pre-Contact shell because if there was a party, a real one, there was alcohol. It wasn't the alcohol that made him uncomfortable. Hell, no. He was making a living off it's illegal status, off being a perfect poster boy for Washington and turning around to his own still hidden in his attic or making 'business' trips down to New York City. He thrived off the underground, the illegal culture his people desired. He would milk his corrupted politicians for all they were worth and throw a dignified fit every time the police came knocking to his door.

_("And on what charges, officers? The fact that I have both a Lithuanian and an Eye-Talian living with me? Tch. My, my. How racist. Why don't you come back with a warrant?")_

On the outside, he was an American young man worthy of being called a role model. He didn't drink. He didn't attend parties. He only went to speakeasies that were free of bootlegged line-ups of alcohol. He went to New York at least once a month, spending days at a time because he liked watching the immigrants pour in from Elis Island. In short, he was a good boy. He was the sort who honestly believe that one mister Alphonse Capone was genuinely an Eye-Talian furniture salesman - not the kind of boy who threw smirks over his shoulder when Toris warned him that the feds usually made a second lap around Philadelphia in hopes of gathering evidence before giving up for several months.

He was a boy who was nothing short of the American Dream. With him around, it was no wonder immigrants were still pouring in after what happened to the Titanic and it was even less of a wonder that they came expecting streets paved with gold.

He was a boy who wasn't really a boy, obviously. He hadn't been a boy since the last time that Arthur had held him while he slept but his face was certainly deceiving, even if the Industrial Revolution had pushed his human age up to fifteen years. So, in theory, he understood the cautious looks that the few parents were giving him now and again.

"How... how can he breathe?" Alfred asked, trying to step forward to the child whimpering in the bed, no older than four years old. The doctor pulled him back instantly, shaking his head.

"How indeed?" Alfred gazed back down sadly at the little boy laid out before him, whimpering from fever and certainly the pain of whimpering itself. Their neck had swollen out roughly the diameter of their face, which was red and slicked with sweat. "It's contagious, son," the doctor warned, tugging on Alfred's jacket. "You shouldn't be in here."

The American Dream's living incarnation tore his gaze from the first boy and dared to look at the row of beds. Children, some looking like toddlers and a red hair girl who might have been twelve, were curled up in everyone of them, more leaning on their parents on chairs. All of them with some sort of version of the first boy's swollen throat, multiple ones with disgusting looking lesions across their body. _As if something burrowed into them and skinned the spot, _Alfred thought. With memories of the Great War all too vivid in his head, of seeing the flesh of his soldiers eaten away by gas and trenches, he couldn't stop himself from gagging.

"How bad is it?

The assembled parents looked up. The doctor gestured towards the door and Alfred followed him out into the cold, Alaskan January winter winds. His own shivering started immediately; pulling up his hood and shoving his hands into his pockets didn't help either. "You're not from around here, are you, son?"

Alfred cringed at the polite endearment but bit his tongue and shook his head. "No, sir."

"Well, you're stuck here now."

"Sir?"

"Nome's been put under quarantine." The doctor was looking back sadly at the hospital's doors.

The slow, sinking, truth slowly dawned. "They..." Alfred bit his lip. "...you don't have enough medicine." He didn't need to see the doctor confirm that or hear an equally confirming answer. The roaring twenties were slipping out beneath his feet. Every dollar spent sneaking bootlegged booze over state lines, every trip to go see Matthew and make sure his equally illegal shipments were making it down; every dime spent tipping at a speakeasy... "They're dying..." he almost choked on the words. "They're dying, they... D-Doc... they're just kids. They're - they're dying..."

As the doctor predicted, Alfred wasn't allowed out of the town. He could go between the few communities surrounding Nome but that was about the best that he could do. As he wound up discovering, Doctor Curtis Welch was the only doctor all of the communities had to share among themselves. Alaska was far from becoming a state and the gold rush had completely died out in these areas. Standing outside the single, twenty-four beds worth of a hospital in Nome, in the bitter cold, he couldn't be sure if he was more horrified by the fact that he had never registered this growing epidemic or by the fact that now that he was here, had held the hand of a sister to keep her back while her father buried her little brother, his body still refused to acknowledge it. Had the illness not been brought to his attention by the feds, he would have never noticed.

"Shit..." The American Dream thrived, children died. It was cruel and hardly fair but there was nothing that could be done about. At least he wasn't the only on looker. There was a man with a two huskies, totally immune to the could, watching in through the window.

"Can you watch them for a minute?" Nome was a small town; even the trust levels of strangers were through the roof. Alfred blinked dumbly before pointing at himself, unsure of why anyone would trust the newcomer. "Just a minute. I - I need to get the doctor's attention..."

"Doc Welch ain't in there," Alfred murmured. "Just the nurses now." There was a saddened look that crossed the man's features. "... Go on. They good 'round strangers?" He got a nod and smiled in response, walking over to crouch down before the huskies, pulling off a glove to offer his hand to sniff. "Then everything's Jake. Go on." When the smaller of the two huskies butted their nose against his bare hand, the stranger nodded and walked inside, seeming to hold his breath. "Looks like you two are stuck with me, aren't you boys?" Smiling down at the dogs, he slipped his glove back on, fixed his scarf like Ivan showed him to, and moved to rub down the husky that nudged him. "Aw, good boy..."

Minutes went by like this and the first husky earned a good tummy rub. The second and bigger of the two? Alfred offered it his gloved hand, continuing with the tummy rub for the other. "C'mon boy, I don't bite." He didn't but the dog certainly did.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. That was how the expression went. Still two days later Alfred found himself crouching down to his knees, cradling his bitten hand to his chest hesitantly. "Dumb old mutt. Don't got no idea who you're messin' with, do ya? Why, I'm the bee's knees back where I'm from." The only hesitancy to sticking his hand out was due to the fact that the man who owned the dog wasn't anywhere to be found. In the fifteen year old's head, if the mutt was trained enough to wait outside a store or home for his master, he was trained enough to make nice and make friends.

So the same hand went out, not sore or bruised. That first bite had been nothing more than a snappish warning. This time, Alfred held his palm flat and away from the dog's face so he could sniff it, keeping his eyes leveled with the dog's. There was a low growl but he shushed the poor thing. "You got nothin' to worry 'bout. I might be with the feds, but I'm the people too. I'm here to take care of the boys and gals. Easy boy, there go. Just like that."

The second bite was much less of a warning and would have broken through his skin had the owner not suddenly called the damn dog off.

A week passed and Alfred found himself drawn to the tiny hospital, still empty of the only doctor. He busied himself with the nurses instead. With smooth talking and that charming, all American, sweet as apple pie smile of his, they couldn't keep him out for long. Today, the beds were filled, as they had been, but there were three noticeable differences. The first was that the boy closest to the door had lost his ability to speak. His mother clung to his father, sobbing silently while his father sat pale as a ghost. Men and women grieved differently; that was something Alfred had learned years ago and re-learned during the Great War. The second change was in one of the nurses - she kept scratching at the back of her neck. Alfred didn't have the heart to point out the bandage on the backside of her neck that was no doubt covering a developing cut.

"You look lonely." He sat down on the edge of a teenager's bed. "Everything Jake?" Yesterday, there had been a little girl in this bed. That was third and final change; today sat a fourteen year old boy with thick black hair and scared matching eyes.

"How'd you know my name?"

Alfred blinked. So it would seem that Prohibition and Jive slang hadn't caught on entirely here. That wasn't shocking. When he first arrived and didn't know to adjust from the way he was used to talking in New York and Philadelphia, all the adults just gaped hopelessly at him. "... Lucky guess... Nah, it's an expression back east. Where's your Ma or Pop?"

Jake avoided the question completely and glanced down at Alfred's left hand. He had pulled his gloves off once his hands were warmed from the temperature inside the room. In lieu of a glove, his left hand lay hastily wrapped up in scraps of half dirtied cloth. "You're hurt... How come?"

"... Anyone ever tell you that 'the third time's the charm?' " Jake nodded. "It's a lie."

For the record, neither were the fourth or fifth times were the charm.

He had long since figured out the lay of the town. Huffing warm air into his bare hands which were now cracked and raw from the cold - that damn dog had made off with one of his gloves and wearing only one seemed pointless - Alfred gave the wooden door an extra hard shove to crack the ice gathering at the bottom. "C-can w-we still get... t-telegraphs o-out?" Ironically, with the American Dream in town, there were two Mister Joneses in the small Alaskan hell hole.

"Sure can."

"B-back east? Yeah? H-how's a-about C-Canada too?" Alfred edged in closer to the semi warm office, shaking the snow off of him. Mr. Jones told him to wait until he had warmed enough to speak properly and asked who and what he needed to telegraph. "M-my brother up in Toronto, my business partner in New York and another associate back in Philadelphia. Can you? It's the same message for each of them, just a different address and recipient." He gave the New York City address first and began. "This one's to Alphonse, from Alfredo. ... Don't ask about the names, got it? Good. Right then. 'Snowed in. Stop. Business set to continue. Stop. Trouble at home, stay clear. Stop..."

The roaring twenties are a lie. The roaring twenties were a lie. The roaring twenties would always be a lie. The roaring twenties are a lie.

There was nothing glamorous about technology failing. Mother Nature could not be bought off with the vast money Alfred had collected from his bootlegging Empire. Children were dying and for the first time in five years, he felt guilty. With Doctor Welch stitching up his left hand, he could hardly sit still through the examination for the epidemic that followed. "You can't be too sure, son. Imagine if you got your hand infected while you were at the hospital. What were you thinking, getting so close to all those infected children?"

"I wanted to make them smile. Just once before they died." He would never forgive himself for accepting their fate.

"They're lucky we stumbled across such a talented story teller."

Alfred's stomach lurched and stirred up a craving for the mead that Toris was always making or those harder drinks he never went near. Anything to push back the sudden spill of memories of a younger colony crawling into Arthur's lap for bed time stories and readings from Shakespeare. The mental wound only stung deeper. Arthur had visited not that long ago. Toris had come across that one toy soldier he had smuggled out of that dark room he thought he had forgotten. "... I learned from the best."

"Mm. A brilliant storyteller but pathetic at making judgment calls. Whose dog attacked you?"

There was a half shrug and a sudden urge to rip out the stiches. "Dunno. Damn mutt won't let me pet it."

Wind stung at his cheeks, drew involuntary tears but no one would dare tear their eyes away from the dark stripped painted in the middle of the town. _Someone, anyone, please._ Everyone's prayers were the same, even the atheist's. Alfred's head and heart had been pounding hard and fast since his earlier conversation with Doctor Welch days ago when he got his hand stitched up. "You can get more medicine?"

"We _could..."_

"...what the hell does that mean?"

"Too cold. The engines and wings on the edge of the territory froze up. We can't rely on machines or planes. We need a flesh and blood miracle."

They were so _close._

"Ee... eh..in.. indo... ehdo..."

"Indomitable," Alfred offered, finishing off a hot dog with mustard and onions. No one questioned it. Children were rarely afraid of him. Well, American children at least. It was like they knew to trust him, knew their nation and even if they didn't, he was great with kids. "It means impossible or really, really difficult to overcome." The children in front of him - an older sister and a younger brother with dark hair and glasses - nodded and looked forward again, the sister sliding her hands along etched metal.

"Spirit," she continued and looked back at Alfred. "Like a ghost?"

He shook his head. "Know what a cheerleader is?" They nodded. "That kind of spirit. Rallying for a team or a cause. Go on. What does the rest say?" Slowly but surely, the little girl was able to finish the reading. Alfred vaguely wondered where their parents where but a babysitter in her teens eventually showed up after they gasped.

"Wow, six _hundred_ miles? That's a lot!" The babysitter glanced at Alfred, trying to figure out if he was a pedophile or not but she too relaxed and tried passing off warm pretzels covered in salt to the kids. The pretzels were refused. Instead, the kids scrambled up the not so high rocks as if they were climbing mountains and glaciers.

"Watch out for broken beer bottles!" he called after them, smiling.

"Take a picture! Take a picture!"

"Pick me uuuuup! Sissy, I'm not big enough!"

"Take a picture!"

The babysitter, in heels, fumbled for a disposable camera but was otherwise helpless to help the children further their climbing from stone to bronze shined by oils of countless hands from countless pats, decades after decades. Before she could announce she couldn't Alfred stepped forward. "I can get them up there. You mind?" Once he had permission he was three bounds to the glacier rock and less than ten seconds to put him beside the children, laughing along with them as he hoisted them each onto the monument. "Wait, wait. Lemme get outta the way. You two don't move - hold onto him! There. One, two - wait, I don't even have the camera!"

It wasn't the first time something like that had happened to Alfred. No, far from it. He didn't seek the monument out but once in awhile when he found himself in Central Park near the Children's Museum, he couldn't help but visit. He walked for the children to go before climbing up the rock again, sighing softly. Like countless before him, he trailed his hand over the darker parts of the bronze to the shiner spots at the tips of the ears and the tails; spots where children so often held on. Finally, he slid his left hand into the open mouth and grinned. "Yeah, that's right. Can't bite me now, can you?" No one would hear his teasing tone. No one would understand the grateful laugh when he affectionately called the statue, "God damn mutt." He was the last who would understand the wave of relief when the sound of sled dogs barking broke the silence of a plagued Alaskan night.

Everyone else was dead.

_Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the Winter of 1925. _  
><em>Endurance · Fidelity · Intelligence<em>

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>HISTORIC NOTES:<br>In 1925, Nome, Alaska and surrounding towns were plagued by a diphtheria outbreak. A lot of us have heard of this from the animated movie Balto, but that's so loosely based off the real events, it's ridiculous. Dr. Welch was the only doctor on call for all of these towns. It killed children and adults alike. The run that wound up saving so many lives is commemorated annually by the Iditarod Trail Sleddog Race.

And for those of you who didn't understand, I write America as a bootlegger whose in with Alphonse Capone. That's why he signed his named Alfredo instead of Alfred for the telegram. He sent another one to Canada because the Canadians were sneaking booze over the boarder too.


End file.
